I don’t necessarily consider myself completely certain that ballot box communism will never work (although not in the near future certainly) but I believe that the far more important work is that which we do in our communities to fight austerity, not the work we do in convincing people to vote for a political party. The promises often made to those who are the most vulnerable in society, that consistently get broken. I believe building community activism, working to develop a political theory based in praxis, and fighting to improve conditions for people abandoned by the political parties is more important, and generally has more of an immediate effect, than focusing on party politics. I do think we should do both, to a limited extent, but I believe that amount of work we do outside the ballot box and in our communities should exceed the amount of work we do…

Jacq Applebee and I have drafted an open letter to the Board and Senior Team of Pride in London about their behaviour over UKIP’s inclusion.

If you’re interested in signing (as a group or organisation) or know of people who would be interested in signing, please let us know – leave a comment with the name you’d like to use, or message me directly through Facebook or contact form.

We’ll be gathering signatures for the next four days at least, before publishing in a forum TBA. Please help us spread the word – and thank you.

To the Board and Senior Team of Pride in London,

We, the undersigned, are writing to express our deep disappointment at Pride in London’s behaviour concerning the inclusion of UKIP in this year’s march, to wit:

UKIP was initially included in the march, despite having failed to sign up to the Pride in London charter. The signing of this charter was a prerequisite of entry – UKIP were the only political group to refuse to sign, but were still accepted as participants.

Pride in London failed to inform their Advisory Board of this decision. Crucially, they failed to consult with their BME representative before accepting UKIP’s application. Said representative was left to find out about UKIP’s inclusion from publicity materials and media coverage.

Pride in London then further refused to discuss UKIP’s inclusion with their BME representative, leading to said representative’s resignation.

After a broadly negative public response from the LGBTQI community to the announcement of UKIP’s inclusion, Pride in London publicly rescinded their acceptance of UKIP’s application. Pride in London assured other participants, and the broader community as a whole, that UKIP would not be allowed to march.

On the day of the march, Saturday June 27th, the UKIP contingent were ushered into the march itself as it was underway. This despite failing to pay the entrance fee, sign the charter, sign the agreement on good conduct, or be included in the parade route. It is important to note here that other groups and individuals who had failed to complete these steps were removed from the march by stewards and security officials.

The Chair of Pride in London, Michael Salter, consequently informed BBC Daily Politics that they had ‘managed to get them [UKIP] safely into the parade’ – confirming that UKIP’s inclusion was deliberate, rather than a last minute error. Mr. Salter expressed concern over the safety of UKIP supporters – but raised none of the concerns posed to him and the Board about the safety and well-being of other LGBTQI marchers threatened by UKIP’s inclusion. Mr. Salter went on to say that it was ‘great that they [UKIP] were able to participate’.

The board of Pride in London failed to respond to questions raised by the community over this backtracking. They have, after nearly three weeks of silence, produced a report that fails to answer the questions and concerns raised to them.

In providing UKIP members with special treatment (waiving of fees, waiving of conditions of entry) whilst assuring the broader LGBTQI community of their non-involvement, Pride in London have shown themselves to be incompetent, mendacious, or both. In particular, Pride in London’s treatment of their BME members and, more broadly, London’s LGBTQI people of colour, has been profoundly disrespectful. Instances of both overt and passive racism and Islamophobia from Pride in London’s board have been previously documented. This recent behaviour has confirmed the view of many in the community that Pride in London has failed in their duty to reflect and honour the multicultural nature of London’s LGBTQI population.

In their lack of respect shown to their own advisory committee, in their lack of respect shown to the broader LGBTQI community (including all other participants in this year’s Pride march and events), in their lack of transparency and failure to communicate honestly, the current Pride in London board shows itself not fit for purpose.

To represent London’s LGBTQI population accurately, the board of Pride in London must reflect the actual diversity of our community – and behave in accordance with its legal role as a community interest company.

We demand that changes be made: within the board, to the ways in which the board communicates, and with Pride in London’s accountability processes overall.

This week alone, three cis writers of my acquaintance have written, been commissioned to write or have appeared on the radio to talk about how gender fluidity is so in right now. The conversations inevitably centre on Ruby Rose – with a touch of Miley Cyrus for diversity. Here in the UK, we had a two page spread in the main evening paper – I’ve lost count of the online pieces from more mainstream lGbt media orgs treating gender beyond the binary as the next bang-on trend. I’ve personally had more newspaper requests for tell-all photo features on this ‘new’ story in the past few months than in the past few years.

As a trans activist, as an artist, I’ve been pushing for greater media awareness, presence, for over a decade. This should feel like a victory – albeit one of many necessary changes to be made. So why am I left feeling like we’ve substituted one problem – invisibility – for another?

Much of what is troubling here is similar to the mainstream media coverage surrounding and following Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out (detailed in Autrostraddle’s reponse here). Privileging of whiteness to the point where it becomes a pre-requisite of coverage[1]. Ignoring any supposedly ‘complicating’ factors – in this diversity monitoring form of selfhood, genderqueer is the only box of difference you get to tick. Gendered transgression is made palatable through an aspirational model of mainstream, cissexist beauty standards. There is no mention of anything that could be deemed political: questions of legal status, legal protections, access to healthcare, rates of violence, discrimination, mental illness. Even gender neutral pronouns and titles are ignored.

These aspects would be problematic enough. Leave out part of the story and you don’t just shorten it – you distort it. But it is in and through these particular distortions that this current framing becomes more dangerous.

Gender non-conforming people are, in this telling, happy to fit themselves within a cisnormative structure of sex and gender. They alter their appearances through clothing, hair and makeup, but not through surgical or hormonal means. They talk about lack of gender options, but in a personal sense, not a structural one. My point is not that anyone should have to undertake (or disclose) medical intervention, or a set form of social transition, to prove that they’re ‘trans enough’ – we are who we say we are, and that fact doesn’t rely on an outside reading of our selves. But the media framing of this – of a ‘true trans’ that involves social and medical transition, and a ‘trans lite’ that does not – the reinforcing of this message through selective and willfully ignorant reporting – plays into already entrenched ideas of exclusion and opposition, and creates another harmful binary of its own.

In April this year I was approached by Woman’s Hour, the UK’s most prominent feminist radio programme. They said that they’d read my previous work with other feminist magazines, and asked me if I’d come on air to discuss ‘non-binary versus transgender’ in the treatment of ‘children referred to doctors for transgender’ (their wording, not mine). A frustrating couple of hours ensued – despite the many changes I’ve made to my own body in order to make it livable, they assumed that, being a genderqueer trans person, I had not, and would not want to allow others the same choice. Their belief was that ‘trans’ people slavishly adhere to traditional binary gender roles, and change their bodies and appearances accordingly, setting feminism back. On the other hand, ‘non-binary’ people were comfortable in the sex and gender they were assigned at birth, and wanted to destroy the labels ‘man’ and ‘woman’ in a way that gave no room for anyone else. Any discussion of similarities, overlap, concrete problems that trans people of all genders and none face – these weren’t the angle they were going for (again, their words). In the end, despite advice from several trans sources that they contact the leading organizations helping trans children of all kinds, they approached instead a feminist known for her anti-trans views, because they could comfortably count on being ‘anti’ age appropriate support for trans children.

It reminded me vividly of the different kinds of abuse I and my trans women friends have received, often from supposedly liberal people. Whereas they are too frequently the targets of furious aggression, I’ve found (online at least) that my genderqueer status has me pegged as confused and traitorous, but more deserving of pity and scorn than doxxing, stalking and death threats. They’ve committed an unforgivable transgression – I’m still capable of being saved and brought back to the fold.

I believe that this is the background and reasoning behind much of the current media framing of certain types of gender variance as sexy. It’s okay, the subtext goes – these people are just playing dress up! They’re still like us, but a little bit rebellious. Not like those people over there…you know, the ones who might have had ‘the op’. It’s a toxic and hateful positioning – helpful only to journalists banking on clickbait and those who oppose justice for all trans and/or gender non-conforming people.

It’s divide and conquer of those who, in the main, have overlapping needs – sometimes, indeed, the same needs. While there are, to my knowledge, a small number of gender non-conforming people who would not feel comfortable under the trans umbrella, there are also large numbers of gender non-conforming people who are trans in many and varied ways. These truths can exist together. My own anecdotal evidence, that there is much category slippage within trans communities, particularly over time, particularly when social circles change, seems to match activist and researcher Ruth Pearce’s:

“I’ve actually been writing some stuff for my thesis recently about how unhelpful it is to have a non-binary/binary binary within ‘trans’ because of the complex reality of identity and experience. I was originally intending for my research (or maybe an element of it) to look *specifically* at non-binary experiences, but I discovered that (in the context of the kind of content-led, discourse-oriented social research I’m doing) it didn’t make any sense to separate out non-binary identities from other trans identities, both because of the massive overlaps within communities and individual experiences, and because of the stories around how binaristic norms get imposed on *everyone* are important to tell.”

Faced with a media fad that seeks to elevate a very small percentage of us, in a limited way, I think it’s even more important for those of us who aren’t (or aren’t straightforwardly) men and women to link in solidarity with those who are – and, indeed, vice versa. We can’t let cis marketing sell us an image of ourselves that sells other trans people, particularly marginalized trans women, short. We can’t let flattery at being thought desirable – or anger with that objectification – stop us from working together on the issues that matter most: transmisogynistic and transphobic/queerphobic violence, lack of housing, lack of healthcare, lack of legal rights, lack of support.

I’m not honest and open about who I am in order to be cooler than thou. I’m doing it because I couldn’t live a lie – and because I want more for every other person who knows how that feels.

[1] Despite the wealth of research into the role of whiteness in erasing, punishing and exploiting genders beyond a modern Western binary, both through colonialism and within its own borders and systems.

*For reasons of clarity: a reference to the fashion/style writing snowclone (see definition here), itself referenced in the Netflix programme featuring Ruby Rose, which is then further referenced by many of the current mainstream pieces on genders outside/beyond the binary that base themselves on Rose and the character she plays in OITNB.

The last couple of months have been some of my lightest blogging ever – and there’s a pretty good reason behind that. I’m lucky enough to be friends with the wonderful Hel Gurney – performance poet, fiction/non-fiction writer, researcher and activist – and, last year, we decided to write an opera – Hel taking care of the words, I the music.

So that is what I’ve been doing. It was, unsurprisingly, intense. And now we have an opera, The Lion-Faced Man, opening with Tete a Tete Opera Festival at King’s Place this August, performed by incredible mezzo Alison Wells.

We had long wanted to collaborate on a piece exploring difference and looking. With The Lion-Faced Man, we felt there was an opportunity to tackle the audience’s assumptions and completely reverse them. Instead of watching a captive performer, the audience is made captive themselves – strapped into a viewing headset, unable to look away as Stephan Bibrowski, the lion-faced man, stares them down. The singer barrels through a litany of characters – doctor, ringmaster, narrator, side-show spectators, the titular man himself – one single voice contorting through speech and song to populate Stephan’s world. How does looking change the substance of what we see, and how are we changed in the looking? Where does biography end and fiction begin?

As much as I write about trans issues, particularly those outside of a binary framework, I realised recently that the majority of that writing is about education, media, specific activist events or frameworks.

Not that I think any of that is a bad thing – but it does leave out something that I, and a lot of other trans people, do in our day to day lives – we swap advice on the practicalities of living in a cissexist, transphobic world.

So here’s what I have on navigating the world as someone who does not (or does not primarily, or straightforwardly) live as a man or a woman.* If you’re new to this, I hope it helps. If you’re an old hand, I’d love to hear your advice. It should go without saying that no one should feel obliged to act as I do to have their gender recognised. But this is what works for me.